Postfix mail being sent, never arrives.

infecticide

I'm trying to setup email notifications for my websites so that when a user creates an account an email is sent to them for verification, I'm using Drupal.

I can send and receive email just fine with postfix in Thunderbird.

The following comes up in the log files when the mail is sent after the user creates their account.

magic919 · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 5:21 pm Post subject:

Hotmail servers silently dumping it or sidelining as spam.

infecticide · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 7:53 pm Post subject:

Is there a way to prevent this? I checked the spam folder and they're not arriving there.

magic919 · Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2007 8:26 pm Post subject:

Apart from not sending them to Hotmail...?

You can take some steps. Hotmail and some other providers will want to see your machine has a static IP, reverse DNS that maps back to the domain, valid From address on the message and a valid domain. They may even take note of SPF these days I think, although my domains don't use it and have no problems. Correct and valid FQHN used in the HELO too.

Can't 100% guarantee that everyone will accept your mail all the time but that should do it.

infecticide · Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 6:20 pm Post subject:

- My machine does have a static ip
- I created a mailbox for the user I am sending automated email as.

What do you mean about "reverse DNS that maps back to the domain?"

magic919 · Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 6:24 pm Post subject:

You have a static IP. When you do an nslookup/dig whatever on that IP does it resolve to yourmachine.example.com. That's what I mean about the reverse DNS. Should resolve to something - yet some do not...

infecticide · Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2007 6:27 pm Post subject:

I think I see what's happened.

The IP address is resolving to my ISP's DNS name for the ip address:

Dagger · Retired Dev Joined: 11 Jun 2003 Posts: 765 Location: UK

I would recommend this website. This will check few spam blacklists and gives all the reasons why you're there. As long as you are on this list you can forget about sending emails to people who don't like spam.
_________________
95% of all computer errors occur between chair and keyboard (TM)
Join the FSF as an Associate Member!
Post under CC license.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3526

infecticide · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 7:38 pm Post subject:

Well my ip isn't on the blacklist, so I can only assume the rDNS issue is culperate.

But why then can I send email from my mail client successfully? I should point out that most, if not all of my mail ends up in the spam folder at hotmail but at least it gets there.

magic919 · Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 7:59 pm Post subject:

You can't really be 100% sure why one specific provider is dumping your mail. If they published all the details it would be great. I guess they don't want spammers working around it.

They might not like your helo, your FQDN, reverse DNS, your subnet, your provider's network, your email address etc.

Your email client is none the wiser. It just hands off to Postfix.

It would be great if they refused the email rather than quietly dumping it, of course.

xbmodder · Guru Joined: 25 Feb 2004 Posts: 404

Hotmail, Yahoo, and several other mail providers have been known to throw out mail from home IP addresses. You can try to find a relay, but that rarely works
_________________
http://xbmodder.us/